Especially, artificial sweeteners! They will visit as many as 1000 flowers a day. They do not need to be on a diet. It will kill them.

Use cane sugar. Period. And NO red food coloring.

You can buy hummingbird nectar and it’s not that expensive–about $1.00 a cup. But, you can make it super easy. And plain, old white cane sugar costs less than a quarter a cup . . . and makes FOUR cups of nectar.

Mix 1 part cane sugar with 4 parts water in a pot and bring to a brief boil.

I mixed 1 cup sugar to 4 cups water.

Do not add red food color. Hummers do seem to like the color red, so get red feeders or tie a red ribbon on your feeder.

They like to perch, but don’t need to. Having perches are fun, though, because they’ll sit to eat and it’s cool to watch.

Wash and rinse well an old soda bottle.

Wash and rinse well your feeders.

I put less than a cup in each feeder. You never want your nectar to go bad. And it will. From heat. From ants or bees. Hummers don’t like bad nectar and they’ll stop coming to visit.

***Fungal Alert!***

Bad nectar can grow fungus which is deadly to hummers. If they get a fungal infection, it will make their tongue swell so they’re unable to eat. They will starve to death in less than two days. A slow, painful death.

It’s best to change the nectar frequently. Weekly in the beginning with it’s still cool, but as the summer comes, you should change it every other day. I think of it kind of like, “Would I still drink this myself?”

The extra I poured into the soda bottle and stored in the refrigerator. This comes out to about 8 cents a cup. And I don’t have to go to the store. It’s all in my kitchen.

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